2012: vSphere 5 and Storage Maturity

Building off the 2011 research, Wikibon updated scoring for vSphere 5.0 environments that included extensive improvements for NFS integrations. The second annual customer survey showed rapid adoption of vSphere 5 along with valuable insights on multi-hypervisor environments, storage protocol usage and more.

Wikibon did a comprehensive review of how storage vendors are progressing towards improving VMware solutions through the use of integration points. In addition to creating a scorecard that gives users a methodology for evaluating the top storage suppliers, the results of an extensive customer survey scrutinized adoption of vSphere 4.x environments.

Infographics on Virtualization from Wikibon

The pending enterprise stack wars pit highly vertically integrated companies against a virtually integrated whole. In theory, the vertical approach can be more easily managed because its owned by a single company. However the virtual approach is more open and potentially has more industry reach.